"There was no good reason, he told the wall itself, night after night,

the wall with no sight, no saints, no arms to catch what falls,

the one oblivious to circumstance and consequence, oblivious to his beautiful boy,

the wall strangers would point to for years to come as that wall where it happened,

the one that divided his days into past and present, darkness and light,

the one he too could only face but not climb over."

- Peter Serchuk

1.

The Bell Tower

The church on Butcher’s Street was as good a place as any for gazing over the half-ruined city of Shayden. The stone brick building sat almost politely, cross-legged atop its perch-like hill – a striking reminder of a nearly forgotten religion – hoping that whatever string of life had kept it standing long enough to see this sorry age was not soon to disappear.

Otto came here often. Though he was no orphan himself, he had oftentimes found himself enjoying the company of those free-living children who called the place home, spending nights and days and nights again within its walls and sharing with them whatever he could spare in exchange for the use of their prized church as a place to read and draw.

As usual, he pushed through the heavy wooden doors, gave his greetings to the younger bunch, and headed for the bell tower.

Had there once been a staircase or a ladder that made the ascent easier, no evidence of it remained. Instead, someone had manufactured a series of rickety beams and ledges – some inclined, some flat – held together by rusted nails and rope that had long since begun to loosen. His first time attempting the climb had been nervy, to say the least. Some of the larger jumps had taken minutes of confidence building to even attempt, and he had come close to falling on multiple occasions.

Now, however, there was no such worry. He was experienced. With a heavy bag slung over his shoulder, Otto took fleeting steps as he manoeuvred his way upward. Though he moved quickly, his steps were no less careful than any time he had come before, and he would be sure to slow down if one of the boards creaked and dipped a little more than it should, or where the stone seemed less sure than usual.

It wasn’t long before he neared the top. The closer he got, the cooler the breeze that drafted against the fuzzy hairs on the back of his neck.

Eventually, he came upon the trapdoor, shoving it hard enough so that it swung open, slamming against the wall of the bell room above. He threw his bag in first, before reaching his arms up and pulling himself through the narrow hole.

Otto dropped the hunk of wood, sealing himself in. The bell – which he would forever be surprised to find still so perfectly intact – hung before him, too heavy for the wind to move, but not heavy enough to have broken free of its ancient shackles.

He stood, his legs a little shaky from the climb, and took a step toward it. Careful not to apply too much pressure, he traced his nail along the curved metal. As he scratched, the thing mimicked the breeze that carried through the room, whaling with an almost shimmering whisper as he took step after step around it. While walking its circumference, he gazed out of the room’s openings. The city spanned well beyond the visible horizon, disappearing over the distant hills. Its mishmash of obscurely shaped rooftops had been crammed so closely together that they seemed almost to be the same building, begrudgingly shoved wherever space could be found.

It was only as he came almost full circle that she appeared before him, resting carelessly on one of the tower’s protruding shelves. The amber hue of her hair shimmered in the late afternoon light, a dazzling distraction in an otherwise dreary place. She sat in silence, still as one of the tower’s gargoyles. Otto traced the line of her vision, searching for whatever it was that had her so fixated.

The city didn’t expand even half as far in that direction. Instead, buildings became increasingly scarce, and the dim candlelight that lit the city became dimmer still, until light itself disappeared.

There it stood, the wall, in all its… glory, an immense hunk of solid iron. In the day’s growing darkness, the thing seemed bigger even than it did during daytime; there was no sunlight bursting over its brim to tell them where it stopped. Instead, the black wall seemed almost as though it didn’t stop at all, as if its summit ascended into the sky itself.

It’s no wonder that no one has made it to the top, Otto thought as he took a few steps toward the girl, careful not to scare her.

As he came upon the sill, she finally took notice of his arrival, granting him little more than a slight smile before diverting her gaze elsewhere once more. Otto didn’t mind, this was how it usually went.

He was unsure whether the girl had always waited for his arrival – she always seemed to be there when he came – or simply enjoyed the place as much as he did. If it was the former, she made no attempts to convey her feelings, brushing him off as if he were just another of the church’s children.

“It’s almost beautiful in its own way, isn’t it?” Otto said. It was always he who had to start the conversations.

“Huh?” She replied, “Oh, the city?”

“Yes, the city.” Otto was used to the awkwardness by now. “The way it contrasts with that desolate face of death, itself being a bubbling pot of colours and people.”

“That’s one way to look at it, I guess.” She shuffled closer to the edge of the platform, dangling her feet. “I imagine it was much better before.”

“Before?”

“Before the wall,” she added, “before all of this.” The girl gestured toward the span of ruins that made up the buildings closest to the wall. “I bet there was grassland here once, fields of green and yellow and all kinds of colours.”

Otto had never even considered it. All he had known was Shayden as it was now, a sprawling mass of people and places and things. The church was one of the last standing remnants of that forgotten time, though none knew if it had actually stood before the wall.

“Tell me more,” he said, clambering up to join her at the shelf’s edge. “Tell me more of the history you dream of.”

“Well…” she turned to him; her face curled up with surprise. Had she not expected him to show interest? He had needed something to keep the conversation going. “I bet our people were once free,” she continued, “free to live the way they wanted to live, free of the worries that the wall presents.”

Free? Were they not still free?

Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

“What worries?” Otto asked.

“I guess for someone whose work is provided by the wall itself, you wouldn’t know.”

For some reason, that comment had struck him. So what if his work was provided for by the wall? Everyone needed to work. Otto kept those thoughts to himself; something told him that this was the best decision.

“I dream of a world where our people worry not about the Iron Wall,” she continued, seemingly noticing his discomfort at the accusation, “where they worry not of what lies beyond, of the talent-seekers and the necessity of paying their way through. I wish we would begin dreaming of what we could make for ourselves where we are.”

Otto couldn’t help but notice how her face lit up as she spoke. Something about her demeaner changed, as if she truly found herself in a happier place just thinking about it. He found himself shuffling closer to her, little by little, enticed.

“And what is it you think we could make for ourselves here?” He asked.

She turned back to him, her face stolid. “We could make for ourselves whatever it is we dream is beyond the Iron Wall.”

Their conversation slowed and eventually ended as the late amber hue of evening drifted into the darkness of night, and the pair went back to their initial business. The girl moved away from the edge, lying with her back against the wall – this was her places to relax, after all – while Otto set about his drawing. His sketchbook was full of sketches of this place, of the crumbling stonework and of the city from the bell tower’s many viewpoints. This time, however – for the first time – he decided he would draw the girl.

Otto awoke the next morning no different a lad than he had been the day before, except for the presence of a lingering memory of the girl’s claim that he seemed unable to shake.

He sat for a moment, his feet flat against the rough, wooden floor beside his bed, and stretched. It had taken him a while to fall asleep; something about her passion, or the way she had looked when they had spoken, had kept Otto’s heart racing more than he thought it should have.

He forced himself up, reaching for the workman’s clothes he had thrown into a tattered pile atop his desk chair in the rush of wanting to leave for the church. They were stained, and heavily at that. Splodges of reddish brown dotted his shirt in irregular patterns, while mud desperately attempted to climb upward from the hem of his trousers.

Otto had washed his uniform for the first few weeks he had worked, before quickly learning that blood never really washed out, even if it looked like it had. It was best just to save himself the effort.

As he opened his bedroom door, he was hit with the strikingly boring whiff of oats. Gruel, he thought, always gruel. They weren’t a family of much means – Otto and his mother – but he was sure they could spare a few coins for something more interesting, at least every so often.

He emerged from his room into their living space. On one side, a small fire burned, its smoke rising through the opening above it, while on the other, a bench and table rested close to the wall. His mother hovered between the two, first setting bowls down, before returning to the cooking pot to stir the whitish-beige mixture.

“Good morning,” she called when she finally noticed him.

“Morning,” Otto grumbled, scratching at the tuft of hair that stuck outward from the crown of his head, attempting to flatten it.

“Here,” his mother said, taking a few steps toward him, “let me get that.”

She flanked him, licking at her fingers like some mother cat, then began to pat he back of his head. After a moment of awkward struggle, Otto gave up and left her to it. It wasn’t long before she finished.

“There,” she said, “much better! How smart you look!”

Smart? Even Otto knew the scraper’s uniform was shabby, to say the least, and if anyone could make it look smart, it surely wasn’t a shaggy haired, scruffy looking lad like him, that was for sure.

Otto quickly found his place on the bench. It was more of a squeeze than he would have liked – in recent years, he had grown from below his mother’s shoulder to the point where he now towered over her – and he had to cram his legs uncomfortably beneath the tabletop.

His mother brought over the small cooking pot, holding it by its rope-like handle. She scooped a ladle-full, before dropping the stuff into his bowl. It fell like clay, splatting against its surface. If there were any liquid left in it, the thick slop made no attempts to show evidence of it.

Yum…

His mother quickly joined him, and the two sat quietly until Otto finished, turning to pull on the boots he left beside the leg of the table. Once the string laces were tied tightly enough, he rose from his seat, picked up his bag and headed for the door.

“I will see you later,” Otto said without looking back.

Just as he began to close the door behind him, his mother called out: “Wait! Take some to have for your lunch!”

She rushed over to the pot once more, scooped another ladle-full into a small container, before closing it with its wooden lid. She placed it in his hand and shooed him away.

Just what I wanted, he thought, more gruel.

It was still dark as he set off toward the wall – one of the many downsides of his line of work. The gentle blue of moonlight lit the roads where it could creep through the overhead rooftops, reaching where candlelight couldn’t.

He wasn’t the only one leaving so early, either, as the roads were filled with sniffling, quick moving figures who made no attempt to acknowledge or greet him as he passed. Instead, they shoved past each other, none willing to relinquish their quickest path to, nor take notice of, the other.

Otto lived in an area of the city known as the ring. It was circular sort of cluster of buildings which huddled together so closely that it made the rest of the city seem a scattered cluster of detached properties. It was an area which, for the most part, consisted of those who found themselves toward the bottom end of the city’s food chain. Here, they were far enough from the wall to escape its shadow but were still not far enough to escape its influence completely. Most in the ring found themselves there not because they wanted to be, but because it was the only place where housing could be found cheaply, albeit one might not consider the conditions of the place fit to be called ‘housing’.

To those on the outside, the ring must have seemed a difficult maze with its twisting alleyways and roads which ducked behind buildings and disappeared into dark corners. For Otto, however, there was no such feeling. He knew these roads, the quickest routes to the local market, the most efficient escapes whenever trouble ensued – which it often did. If anything, exploring the intricacies of it all had become a game for him through his younger years. How far could he go into the maze and still find his way back?

Today, however, like all days he went to work at the wall, he took the quickest route out; he turned right at the small bakery on the corner, down the steps at the end of that cobbled road, then past the Salty Dragon – that pub on the ring’s outskirts which acted almost as a meeting point for those who lived within, and those who didn’t.

He passed finally through one of the gated entrances between two buildings, emerging on Mosshill Lane. As he descended the slope of the road, the wall grew, and grew, and grew. What had seemed a behemoth thing, anyway, gradually became taller, to the point that he could no longer see the top as he craned his neck upward. The solid black of the wall became more intricate as its details showed with more clarity – its small ledges, rough surface and sloped ridges, all offering scant purchase for careful climbers. The closer one got to the wall, the less it seemed a man-made structure, and the more it seemed a naturally formed cliff.

No man could have made this, Otto found himself thinking. It was impossible, unimaginable, that any group of people like him could have created such a thing. Compared with the miniscule buildings that occupied the space below it, the wall seemed entirely alien.

“What time do you call this?” A familiar voice called as he neared the gated perimeter at the wall’s base.

Otto, who had been staring upward as he walked, brought his gaze down to the shrivelled figure that manned the entryway.

“I’m early, Baro!” Otto shouted back. In the brisk morning air, his voice carried.

“Everyone else is here already,” Baro said, shuffling impatiently. He kicked a stone in Otto’s direction. “I’ve been waiting to lock up, come on!”

Otto jogged the last stretch – forty steps or so – and ducked through the gateway. Baro slapped him on the shoulder as he passed – a meaningless gesture, Otto hoped.

It was the smell that hit him first. No matter how long he worked in the pit, there was no way he could get used to it. It wasn’t just the blood; it was the sick, the rotting flesh, the leftover body odour from an attempted climb. The smell always lingered long after they had finished, and Otto imagined he must reek of the stuff whenever he returned home. Had he known just how many of the climbers dirtied their underwear as they fell, he likely wouldn’t have taken the job in the first place.

“There’s six altogether today,” Baro said to the four scrapers, “unless we have any unexpected guests.” Otto didn’t find his joke funny. If anything, it was insensitive. The others laughed either way.

Otto couldn’t help but look down as they walked along the gated edge of the pit. Though they cleared the bodies of those that fell, they couldn’t be entirely sure that they hadn’t missed anything, and he often found himself thinking that he had spotted a jutting white bone or clump of some limb emerging from the mud.

The first of the day was only a short walk along the wall. It was a male, between the ages of thirty and forty. Not that it mattered. All climbers ended up the same when they hit the ground; they became nothing, or almost nothing.